Gothic mystery collides with the social-media age in Leigh Stein's roller-coaster of a novel, If You're Seeing This, It's Meant for You. The gothic mansion here is a deteriorating Los Angeles architectural landmark serving as a hype house for social-media influencers. Dayna, in the wake of an embarrassingly public breakup that plays out on Reddit, reluctantly agrees to manage the house despite her complicated past with it and its owner.
Part of Dayna's motivation to return is curiosity about the disappearance of the house's most popular influencer, a tarot reader named Becca. This curiosity is shared by the other residents of the house, so they all decide to investigate in the way they know best: a social-media campaign dramatizing the search.
The setting is delightfully unnerving, populated by characters with both ridiculous and relatable foibles. This includes Jake, who plumbs his many charms to cater to his target demographic of middle-aged female followers, and Olivia, an orphan with a "tragic past," who posts a lot of crying content but is genuinely haunted by guilt over her parents' deaths. They all come together to create a novel that's funny, horrifying, and eerily insightful.
Stein (Land of Enchantment; Self Care) deftly mixes uncanny creepiness with the absurdity of social-media jargon. When one of the characters becomes increasingly untethered from reality, comparing herself to obscure biblical references, another says, "I don't know what that is, but I think you're experiencing burnout, which is extremely common." The novel's deadpan humor, combined with the sharp commentary on the strange psychic damage of living lives online, makes for an enthralling read. --Carol Caley, writer